Category Archives: Reviews

Review: Retro Recipe Golden Grahams (Honey is Back)

I’ve talked about this on the blog before, but I believe there is an understated, yet sacred, beauty to foodstuffs that make the most out of minimal ingredients. This I have dubbed my “Egg & Cheddar on Ciabatta Theorem,” and I hear it’s gaining traction among renowned microgastronomists.

This framework of culinary thought applies to Golden Grahams. Not so much literally, as Golden Grahams have as many peripheral filler ingredients as any processed breakfast cereal, but Golden Grahams have at least maintained an overall brand reputation for unanointed simplicity. Golden Grahams cereal squares taste like honey graham crackers, simple as that. If you want more nuanced flavor, either buy a Golden Grahams Treat or buzz off (presumably into the open arms of Honey Maid S’Mores or Cinnamon Graham cereals).

Yet after decades of chaste cereal pride, leave it to a year like 2020 to see Golden Grahams not only breaking bold new graham ground but also revealing (by way of an apology) a betrayal eight years in the making.

Bam. Smelted Golden Grahams icing on a so-so Toaster Strudel. Boom. A way overripe Golden Grahams S’Mores Remix snack pouch. And now, the grand ka-pow: Retro Recipe Golden Grahams that…bring honey back as an ingredient?

This is so silly to me because a quick googling suggests honey wasn't removed from GG until like 2012, so the "Retro Recipe" is anything but.

Also, multiple apostrophe errors here? "80's"?? "Golden Graham's"??? https://t.co/9ikBgmYsAk

— Cerealously 🥛🥣 (@cerealouslynet) September 12, 2020

There’s the betrayal. Maybe I’m the most deliberately ignorant Golden Grahams fan, but I had no clue honey left the cereal around 2012—a fact that makes the ’80s box theming feel a little disingenuous.

Regardless, I’m excited to taste real honey in my Golden Graham again. Like Plato’s Allegory of a Cave’s Continental Breakfast, I’ve lived nearly a decade with false faith in the Grahams I spooned before me.

Will this new golden light blind me, or free me?

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: general mills, golden grahams, honey. 19 Comments

Sep. ’20

Review: Malt-O-Meal ChurrO’s & Fruity Blasts Cereals

This is a Cinnamon Toast Crunch callout post! Yes, I am weaponizing my half decade of accumulated cereal culture clout to criticize the gratuitous Toast Crunch idolatry of our times.

Don’t get me wrong, CTC is good, but I’m here to insist that it isn’t flawless and certainly isn’t immune to competition. Just like Honey Maid Cinnamon Graham Cereal before it, Malt-O-Meal’s Churr-O’s Cereal amply evidences this. Ostensibly a cut-and-dry reboot of the early 2010s’ Post Mini Cinnamon Churros, Churr-O’s nevertheless deserves a blind and unprecedented review, as Mini Cinnamon Churros were discontinued before I could use this blog to memorialize their intricacies.

Oh, and there’s a new Malt-O-Meal Not-Trix, too. “Pranks,” if you will. But we’ll get to those. Right now, we’ve got preconceived Toast Crunch-spectations to crush. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: cinnamon, fruity, malt-o-meal. 1 Comment

Aug. ’20

Review: Smartfood Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries Popcorn

There is beauty in simplicity. This is known.

Example: in the 200,000ish-person city where I live, despite dozens of renowned restaurants and artisan makers, perhaps my favorite menu item is a modest egg & cheddar on ciabatta sandwich. The ability to do so much with so few ingredients never fails to blow me away and make me scramble back for more. I mean, have you seen most sandwiches these days? Their menu descriptions are borderline biblical, with so much stuff stuffed within that it’s as hard to taste anything in particular as it is to eat the thing without it prolapsing prosciutto and quarts of aioli all over your hands.

But I digress. And wipe my fingers off.

I’ll admit, when it was first announced, Smartfood’s new Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries popcorn mix turned me off with its very concept. Sharp hulls and serrated Crunch Berries teaming up to shred my palate? My dental insurance is expensive enough. But now that I’ve actually got a chance to try the stuff, I’m happy to say that I was wrong, and Cap’n Crunch is a master of minimalistic munchies. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: cap'n crunch, non cereal. Leave a comment

Aug. ’20

Review: Cookies & Creme Krispies

This is going to be a tough review to write. Not because Cookies & Creme Krispies are so rich with nuance that their abstract appeal defies conventional language. More like the opposite: this cereal is such a big yawn that my writerly brain is distracted, grappling with daydreams of better cereals. Or any cereal, for that matter.

It’s no secret that I’m biased against Krispies, Pebbles, and any other cereal that lacks a certain stomach-smacking density. But for the sake of this review, I will say that Cocoa Krispies & Pebbles are growing on me as indulgent late-night bowls of sopping milked chocolate. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: cookies & creme, kellogg's, krispies. 4 Comments

Aug. ’20

Review: Three Wishes Cocoa Cereal

There are a lot of tough jobs in this world: oil rig worker, skyscraper window washer, lumberjack. But if we’re talking about a real David vs. Goliath battle of wits and resources, being an indie cereal maker is a profession where you have to overcome a lot of lopsided odds. Trying to market a new breakfast product against multi-billion dollar corporate behemoths like General Mills or Kellogg’s means accepting that your product will have to cost more and work harder without decades of brand recognition and cheap, bulk ingredients.

This is naturally why many independent cereal companies target their own niche of cereal consumers. Since the world’s cereal giants usually lack truly wholesome releases for those eating low carb, high protein, gluten-free or organic diets, we’ve seen any number of specialty or boutique breakfast startups offering cereals that are theoretically more healthy than any Special K or Kashi product.

From Magic Spoon and Cereal School to OffLimits and Three Wishes, there’s a lot of growing competition in the specialty cereal game. So how do you tell them apart? Well, for me it all comes down to the base grain*, which I’ve asterisked because several of these use grain alternatives like tapioca flour or chicory root fiber. If you read my first review of Three Wishes Cereal, where I covered their three introductory flavors, I noted how they perform a lot better in the base grain camp.

Does their newest release measure up? Let’s find out in three (wishes), two (wishes), one (wish)… Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: chocolate, three wishes. 1 Comment

Aug. ’20

Review: Minecraft Creeper Crunch Cereal

If you came to this page in hopes of finding the Minecraft Creeper Crunch Cereal review with the fewest cheeky nods to the game, you’re in luck! Minecraft Creeper Crunch Cereal (surprisingly) deserves more respect than that. So I won’t be telling you how its “goodness creeps up on you,” how you “really should fill up a bucket of it,” nor how much I’d love to “swim in a swampy biome of it.”

Nope, just straight facts from here on out, promise: Minecraft Creeper Crunch is the latest in a long line of Kellogg’s licensed cereals following a similar squares-‘n’-marbits formula. From Frozen Cereal to Finding Dory Cereal, this is as inoffensive and forgettable as licensed cereals get, which may not sound great, but the bar for movie tie-in releases is set lower than bed—I can’t. Don’t make me say it.

Bedroc—

No. Enough is enough. The point is that, since Kellogg’s cereals of this breed actually use oat flour in their little squared circles, they’re just barely within spitting distance of Lucky Charms in terms of how good an oats with marshmallows cereal can be. All they were missing was an it factor. A flavor nebula unexplored by man or leprechaun. And yes, Cinnamon Vanilla Lucky Charms happened, but the cheap vanilla only cut the cinnamon’s potency. No, Minecraft Creeper Crunch is a pure cinnamon and marshmallows cereal, baby.

Now before you go correcting me on the uniqueness of a cinnamon-marshmallow cereal, I’ll clarify: corn-based Marshmallow Apple Jacks cannot hang, But you are right, in that there is an old cereal worth comparing with Minecraft Cereal.

Can you guess it?

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: cinnamon, kellogg's, marshmallows. 3 Comments

Aug. ’20

Review: Funfetti Cereal

I Turned [REDACTED] And All I Got For My Birthday Was This Lousy Cake Cereal

Well of course, this isn’t entirely true—I also got a heck of a champagne headache and a long arm scratch from a cat who wasn’t as playful as I was. But nevertheless, the highest peaks of yesterday’s celebrations had nothing to do with the trough-full of sugary spheres that happened to make an incidental appearance.

Maybe I’m spoiling this review by leaking my distaste for Funfetti Cereal, but hey: it’s my post-party and I can post what I want to. Plus, I have yet to be impressed by a cereal marketed as vanilla or birthday cake, so my only scant hope for Funfetti Cereal was that—since no one really knows who’s manufacturing the cereal—it could crumb out of left field with, oh, I don’t know, actual freeze-dried frosting piped into every puff or something. As I mentioned in my news post on this cereal, the Funfetti and Pillsbury branding is a bit confusing. You’d expect General Mills to be behind this, but they only own the rights to Pillsbury cookies, biscuits, cinnamon rolls, etc., not Funfetti or other dry baking mixes.

So who’s actually behind this confetti-caked crunch fest? And is it even worth finding out? Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: birthday cake. 3 Comments

Aug. ’20

Review: Pillsbury S’Mores Golden Grahams Toaster Strudel

P. is for pouches, they’re foiled & grand!
O. is for OH YES!, my response to the brand.
P. is for pouches, c’mon can’t you read?
– is the hyphenated joy of a fast feed.
T. is for toasted, as all Tarts should be.
A. is for awesome, this crust fills me with glee!
R. is for Raspberry, the worst compared to Strawberry.
T. is for the filling: is it good? My answer: very.
S. is for sweet icing, a true sort of edible art.

And those, my friends, are the reasons I love Pop-Tarts.

Okay phew, I’ve put the Kellogg’s execs reading this to sleep: now let’s talk about how good these Toaster Strudels are.

Sure, I’ll be the first to admit that I have very little Toaster Strudel experience. I grew up on P-T (which is, in a sense, the opposite of P.T. the game), and with that kind of lifelong conditioning, anything more than tearing open a crumb-spewing pouch with the elegance of a resident campsite raccoon feels like too much work to get a toaster pastry in my stomach.

But if there’s one flavor I’d move mountains for—assuming there’s a rich vein of graham’d ore to suckle beneath them—it’s Golden Grahams. Though I have no proof of this, Golden Grahams seems to be the most popular cereal that never gets flavor variants, despite how obvious the possibilities are. Perhaps this is just a testament to Golden Graham’s chaste and pure breakfast beauty, but with a bunch of other s’mores cereals out there using Golden Grahams-esque pieces, it’s kind of strange that the General Mills brand has only given Golden Grahams the S’Mores treatment in cereal bars and now flaky strudels—maybe when GM’s legendary S’Mores Crunch was discontinued way back, the S’Morecerer casted an unbreakable “do nut resuscitate” spell in retaliation.

Unblazed cereal frontiers aside, I’m excited to get my large rectangular graham on, a little thicker than usual. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: general mills, golden grahams, s'mores. 3 Comments